Chicken Stuffed Fried Bread / Roti Goreng Isi Ayam Berempah

We just came back from Jakarta last Saturday after spending the 3 weeks of the school holiday there. Although life was very easy in my parents’ house (I didn’t have to do house chores and most of the time I didn’t have to cook), but I did miss my kitchen a lot………………….

I got bored after a week and really wished to get back here and start doing things that I like (cooking, baking, posting new recipes in my blog, going to my favorite supermarket, etc.). The internet connection was terrible there so I couldn’t update my blog for 3 weeks.

Well, but here I am now back with my daily routines. School has already started today and there will be exams in 1.5 months from now (the part that we all don’t like because it’s so stressful………………).

Today, I’m going to post one of Indonesian’s traditional snack, which is fried bread, which I loved to eat so much when I was a kid.

I hadn’t eaten this kind of bread for so many years (more than 25 years) and I don’t exactly know why. Maybe because this bread is not common in the modern bakeries in the big cities nowadays. In fact, I don’t remember ever seeing this bread being sold in the big bread shops that I ever visited. Well, it is a traditional kind of bread that was existed long before big and modern bakeries opened their shops for the first time and it is kind of forgotten now, but I’m not a big fan of bread from modern bread shop, and I still like the old style bread that I used to have when I was still a little kid.

For the bread, you can use any kind of bread dough recipe that you have. There are many versions for the fillings too, but for this time, I also used a more traditional recipe for the filling. I cooked the chicken in coconut milk, herbs, and spices, and it was so fragrant that we couldn’t east just one. Even my son always ate 2 every time (and it was a big size bread). By the way, it was his first time eating fried bread.

What I like from this bread is that it is crispy and crunchy on the outside but soft in the inside. It is totally different from a baked one, as you can see in the bread texture in the picture below. My son absolutely loved it and that made me very happy. Too bad my husband couldn’t eat this because he was having a very terrible cough that day. I will definitely make this bread again but with different fillings next time.

For the filling

Ingredients:

200 gr chicken breasts (no bones)

1/2 large shallot

3 garlic

3 candlenuts, stir fry in a non stick pan without oil until fragrant

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 lemongrass, peel the outer layer and use the softer pale yellow stalk. Crush with a pestle

5 salam leaves

5 lime leaves

50 ml coconut milk

100 ml water

2 tbsp olive oil

Method:

Cook the chicken breast in the boiling water until soft and easy to cut into small parts

Shred the chicken and set aside

With a blender or mortar and pestle, mash shallot, garlic, and candlenuts until they form a paste

Heat a medium wok with 2 tbsp of olive oil

Add mash shallot, garlic, and candlenuts, and stir fry until fragrant

Add lemongrass, salam leaves, lime leaves, shredded chicken, salt, sugar, coconut milk, and water. Mix well and cook in low heat until there is only little water left. The texture of the mixture should be moist and not dry

Set aside the mixture in a bowl or plate

For the bread:

Ingredients:

400 gr bread flour

100 gr all purpose flour

60 gr sugar

1/2 tsp salt

11 gr instant yeast

4 egg yolk

100 gr unsalted butter

250 ml cold milk

Other ingredients:

2 egg whites, beaten

breadcrumbs

oil for deep frying

Method (if using food processor)

Prepare the food processor with the knead blade assembled (since I doubled the recipe and it was 3/4 of the capacity of my food processor, I used the kneading blade and not the steel blade)

Place flour, sugar, salt, and instant yeast inside the food processor (put the salt and instant yeast on the different sides of the food processor bowl). Close the lid and pulse 2 to 3 times to mix the ingredients

Add egg yolk and butter. Pulse again 2 or 3 times to combine all the ingredients together

With the motor running, pour liquid through the feed tube in a steady stream as fast as the flour absorbs it

Continue processing until dough cleans the side of the work bowl

Let the machine run to complete the kneading process in about 3 to 4 minutes (it took 4 minutes for my food processor to complete the kneading process for this amount of recipe). End result: dough should be smooth, bouncy and not sticky

Transfer the dough to a big bowl that has been lightly oiled. Turn the dough over to coat completely with oil. Cover the dough with a cling wrap and clean cloth

Let rise for about 60 minutes. To see if the dough has risen enough, simply poke your finger into the dough, and if the finger mark stays, then it has finished rising

Transfer the dough to the counter top (it shouldn’t stick too much since it was coated with oil from the bowl)

Cut dough into 50 gr each

Shape the dough and add the chicken filling based on the instructions below and place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper
Roll each dough into a circle and flatten the sides with the palm of your hand, leaving the middle side slightly thicker than the edges. You can also use a rolling pin, but this method was easier for meFlip the dough bottom side up and place about 1 tbsp of the filling into the center of each doughBring all edges to the centerTwist to seal tightly. With the seal at the bottom side, smooth the dough by rolling it with your hand

To make a oval shape, after adding the chicken filling, bring together the two edges and pinch to seal tightly

Dip each dough into the beaten white egg, then coat the dough in breadcrumbs and remove the excess